Thursday, September 15, 2005

All Things Go

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Perfectly Legal Fun With Seventeen-Year-Old Boys

Paraphrased conversation had with Gawky Indie Teen at Beachfest:

Us: Blah blah blah blah...GIT (turns around): Hey - are you guys talkings about Matthew Barber?Friend (with an entirely straight face): Who's Matthew Barber?GIT: That guy that just played.Us: Oh yeah?GIT: Yeah. He used to be cool.Us: Oh yeah?GIT: Yeah. He was all friends with Broken Social Scene and Joel Plaskett and those guys but then he went in another direction or something.Me (also entirely straight-faced): Who's Joel Plaskett?GIT: Thrush Hermit?Me: OhhhHHHhhh.

Anyone who knows me & my friend knows why this was hilarious.

I think the gods were angry at our secret indie superiority. I got zapped with a rather nasty-looking sunburn on my shoulders and was also on the receiving end of a mild case of sunstroke. Yeow! Karmically punished!

Friday, September 02, 2005

The Blood Of Fats Domino Is Not On My Head

I'm working on a "Year In Review" issue at work. Basically I'm writing up a timeline of important music-related events in 2005. Neil Young has surgery for an aneurysm, Michael Jackson gets acquitted, Madonna falls off a horse - that sort of thing.

I have a quota to fill and was running out of important events. So I started thinking (and maybe even secretly hoping) that a prominent musician should kick it in the coming days in order to make my job a little easier.

Horrible, I know.

The next day I read that Fats Domino is missing and feared dead in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I tell a co-worker that I think I maybe had a hand in killing Fats Domino. We laugh about it, but I am just appalled at myself.

As it turns out, Fats is okay! And he's looking pretty rad, if I do say so.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Sur Une Nappe De Restaurant

After some careful consideration, I've decided to ignore the fact that the world is basically going to hell (i.e. shootings in the GTA almost every day, New Orleans is sinking, the price of gas) and write about....going out to dinner! Two dinners, in fact! Sound like a good plan? Awesome.

Monday night. My highschool friend Julie (who lives in Vancouver) was in Toronto for a week or so. Since she was in town, she decided to organize a reunion dinner for our circle of friends circa 1998. If you're a friend of mine and/or faithful reader of this blog, you'll know that highschool wasn't my favourite. So I knew this reunion dinner had the potential to be awkward/awful. I mean, I hadn't seen some of these women in six years.

Anyway, so nine of us met up at this generic Italian restaurant. Hugs and pleasantries were exchanged. Some looked different. Others looked exactly the same. One just got married. Another was engaged. We were all finishing school and starting careers. We were adults.

But it wasn't long before we resorted to our favourite pastime as teenagers; talking about who we hated and why we hated them.

Gossip. Backstabbery. Doublethink.

I don't know why I was friends with some of these women. It was more circumstance than anything else. Truthfully, I had nothing in common with them. And the only thing we have in common now is a shared history.

I put on a happy face, but I couldn't wait to get out of there. I know I wasn't the only one.

I left with a pounding headache...and an overwhelming desire to shower.

In battery acid.

Tuesday night. Still had the headache I'd acquired the previous night. I had dinner with Ben, Jean, Valerie (who was also visiting from Vancouver) and her lovely sister Julia. The evening was relaxed. Conversation was effortless, hilarious. Hugs and smiles were frequent and genuine. It was wonderful. It was the opposite of Monday. And my headache?